In December 2013 I had the opportunity to attend a creative workshop with Leila Amat, a photographer hailing from Madrid. Organized by the Caulín photography academy, the main aim of the workshop was to create an image from scratch. That is, with what was on hand without having previously planned it. After listening to the sound advice of the speaker, we all went to the beach where Lelia offered to be our model.

If I’m honest, at first I had no idea what to do … What image or story could I create on a deserted beach in the middle of winter? My ideas were as frozen as the weather. I looked around and saw seaweed … lots of seaweed. Something thawed in my mind and I came up an idea – the concept of the journey to the kingdom of the dead. The coming and going of life itself. But how I was going to show that in a picture with what I had on hand? If you’ve never done anything like this workshop before, I can tell you from experience that it’s difficult to create something new, be it a photo, a painting or even a cake, without having planned it even just a little bit first. In my camera bag I had a pen and my wallet and the beach had seaweed and water. So with these four things I set about putting together my photo. Lelia bravely agreed to lie naked on the seaweed with her feet in the sea and I put two coins on her eyes to symbolize the fact that she was dead, and could pay the ‘ferryman’ for her crossing. On her hand I drew a Reiki symbol to try to show the life force or universal energy to which we all belong.

The image is accompanied by a few words (in Spanish) that popped into my head later on that afternoon. It is seemed that once my creativity had thawed, it was difficult to stop.